1. KIPO held a「Korea-China-Japan Design Forum」
The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People’s Republic of China and the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) jointly held a Korea-China-Japan Design Forum.
This year was the 8th Forum for experts of KIPO, SIPO and JPO to discuss major issues and solutions regarding design protection. The three countries have held the Forum in turn every year. The Forum was held in Tokyo in 2015 and Beijing in 2016.
This year, the Design Forum subject was on “Legal Protection of Character Design”, to diagnose the recent actual states of character industries in the three countries, explore alternatives and introduce intellectual property (IP) information that a designer or the like should be well-informed for the legal protection of a character.
Major contents included: ▲ protection of a character design through an IP right ▲ protection of a Chinese cartoon image design ▲ legal protection of a Japanese character ▲ company’s character IP infringement and correspondence case ▲ Chinese character industry and actual states of distributing and using a IP right ▲ overseas expansion of Japanese animation, etc. The Forum included the relevant experts’ statements on certain topics and discussion.
2. KIPO provides patent and other cited information for convenience in analyzing a patent correlation
KIPO announced to expand the range of providing services regarding patent information and other cited information in patent documents, through KIPRIS (www.kipris.or.kr), a free IP search service for the people, to make it easy to analyze a correlation between patent techniques.
The patent and other cited information provided through KIPRIS are provided by using a patent document which an examiner actually cites in a notice of request for submission of argument during the examination process. This information is available in details by each application and is linked to its original to be easily confirmed, thereby improving a user’s convenience.
In the case of using such information in connection with a real-time view function of a notice of request for submission of argument which has been served, since it is possible to understand the technical relation between patent documents presented by an examiner during an examination process, the information is expected to be of help in analyzing the correlation of the patent techniques.
3. The number of PCT international patent applications related to the virtual/augmented reality technology showed an average annual increase of more than 23%
According to KIPO, 3,111 international patent applications regarding the virtual/augmented reality core technology were published worldwide, with an average annual increase of 23.1% from 110 in 2007 to 716 in 2016. Especially, an increase of 43.2% on comparing 2016 to the previous year is remarkable.
By major technologies related to the virtual/augmented reality, the number of the published applications is 1,237 (39.8%) in the content generation/copyright technology, 611 (19.7%) in the device/display technology, 577 (18.5%) in the interaction technology, 390 (12.5%) in the platform technology and 296 (9.5%) in the object tracking/sensor technology.
By applicants, many applications for the virtual reality technology were filed by the US companies including Microsoft, Google, IBM, Intel, etc. and the Japanese companies including Sony, Brother Kokyo, Konami, etc. As Korean companies, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics were included within the top ten (10) companies in the number of the applications. The top ten (10) companies in the number of filing the applications regarding the augmented realty technology included US companies, Microsoft, Qualcom, Intel, Empire Technology, Magic Leap, Daqri, etc., followed by Korean companies, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, etc., and Japanese company, Sony, etc.
4. The number of patent applications for an intelligent virtual secretary has greatly increased
According to KIPO, since the leading mobile communication companies in the terminal market, Samsung and Apple, have provided various services by commercializing their own intelligent virtual secretary, the number of the relevant patent applications has greatly increased.
In an intelligent virtual secretary, an artificial intelligent (AI) program mounted in a smart phone performs an individual secretary role. The intelligent virtual secretary processes an order, reservation, search, etc. which are voice-ordered by a user on behalf of the user. As well, since the intelligent virtual secretary is mounted to various smart electronic devices or automobiles, to perform a diversity of work, its application range is expected to further expand.
As it meets such an expectation, the number of the intelligent virtual secretary-related patent applications was only 11 in 2013 but increased to 36 in 2014 as much as more than 200% and to 61 in 2016 with an increase of about 70% compared to 2014. As the intelligent virtual secretary is a new communication mode between a user and a terminal, the increase trend is expected to continue in the future.
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